Holden Advisors Blog

A reverse auction may land you a new client, but if you are the incumbent, it may be better to say no. Here’s why.

When determining product value, it’s important to go beyond cost and demand. Your customers’ perceived value matters too, especially if you want to build lasting business relationships.

In the world of sales, it’s easy to get caught up in the possibilities of an unsolicited RFP. But, if you find yourself dealing with procurement, you might want to save your energy.

Imagine if you could banish “no-decision” from your sales funnel. More deals that travel all the way to the win/loss finish line, less wasted sales time, more essential customer needs resolved, and a higher share of wallet. What’s standing in your way? Is it the wrong solution, an inadequate business case, inability to get budget, or something else? In our experience, the real problem boils down to one thing—the inability to create and build a business vision that propels your customer’s organization to embrace change.

Top-performing strategic account managers get this. They sell potential. They build a shared vision around the ability to address a compelling business need or market opportunity and build the scaffolding of commitment to make this vision a reality.

Top performers exhibit three essential characteristics, and they know how to deploy each trait based on the sales situation:

            1. Divergent Thinking vs. Convergent Thinking
            2. Learning vs. Teaching
            3. Curiosity Quotient (CQ) vs. Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

As a strategic account manager, you take the long view in working with your customers to ensure that each of them gets the right solution. You invest time in evaluating your customer's business and sourcing the best team internally to configure a valuable solution. It takes teamwork, planning, and execution.

Is Your Product a Commodity? Is it really? Or, does your customer cry commodity to get you to decrease your price? Adele McLean talks about how you can get out from under the negotiation tactic "cry commodity" to avoid the commodity trap.

Smart salespeople distinguish themselves from the pack of competitors. They are game changers, and they don’t wait to be pursued by potential customers. Game changers are assertive and effective as they challenge—with diplomacy—a customer’s viewpoint.  They think strategically and target potential opportunities that a customer may not yet realize exists, or they recast the way a customer views its situation.  If a customer appears to have little interest, a game changer reframes the conversation to build a compelling business case. It is a honed persona cultivated from an investment in thoughtful preparation,planning and confident execution.    

Mergers can be a terrific way to grow your business, customer base, and product offerings. Given the changes in the regulatory environment, access to capital, and overall market appreciation, we see many companies choose a merger as a growth strategy now. The message to shareholders promises 1+1=3. In other words, the new whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. A single transaction promises that a stronger market position will lead to a significant increase in sales—while reducing costs.

However, the promise of the merger can often fall short of the reality.

Good-better-best pricing is everywhere. Companies often offer choices on just about everything from all-organic ingredients, to cable bundles for sports fans and those for movie buffs, or pay-in-advance hotel reservations.

I received a call late Friday afternoon from one of our clients, a $800m DaaS company. The VP of Sales Transformation had attended a recent Negotiating with Backbone^SM workshop and played the role of a Coach. She was collecting revenue-and-profit impact stories from the 30 employees who had also attended the workshop, and she was thrilled with the results they were reporting.